The Blessed Dare
by Megrh08
Summary: College AU. Will is captivated by Lyra, and a mutual friend dares them to take their relationship to a whole new level with a lot less clothing. Will's POV, some Lyra too. Rated M for future smut, slow build.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello there! First fanfic ever...and I'm not a writer so please be gentle with your criticism!**

**This is a His Dark Materials fanfic, AU. Will and Lyra are in college, Jordan College (although it's in America). Iorek is not a bear, but he is a very large human from Greenland. Pan will be making an appearance :)**

**So far it's Will's POV. May switch to Lyra in the future. Smut will come later ;)**

**Let me know what you think!**

God, she was beautiful. Not pretty, per se, or what you would call cute, but absolutely, stunningly beautiful.

She looked like an elf, with long dark blonde hair that curled and waved down to her small waist. Her legs were long and lean, but muscled, and she had freckled shoulders and graceful collarbones that sloped down to- oh man.

Honestly, I usually would try my hardest not to look at that area on girls (I _was_ raised with manners), but this girl was an exception. I couldn't NOT look. And believe me, she noticed.

The first time I saw her, she was riding her bike across campus, her long hair flying loose behind her in the crisp autumn breeze. She streaked across my vision like a comet, legs pumping fast and a big smile on her face, and I could not stop staring at her. I probably could have gotten away with it, but she pulled up to a bike rack and it seemed she was headed to the same lecture that I was. So she had brains as well as a body that could kill (not that I was looking at the way her flowy white top hinted at the shape of her)….okay, yeah, I was looking. But I had gotten to class way too early due to a startling and unprecedented lack of traffic, so I had plenty of leisure time for snooping on hotties.

She pushed the bike up to the rack and looped a bike chain around it a few times, securing it with a padlock. That done, she shifted the large tote bag on her shoulder and practically _strutted_ up the stairs. Good Lord. Apparently I stared too hard or something because then the girl turned around at the top of the steps and looked directly at me. It was only at this point that I became aware that I had a death grip on my coffee, my eyes were glazed and my mouth was hanging open. She stared straight at me for a good ten seconds, smirked, and disappeared into the lecture hall.

Thunderstruck, I followed.

The lecture halls at Jordan College are much smaller than most other colleges I had toured. Unfortunately this meant that I could not hide in masses of students and stare at her from a respectful distance, instead I would be in one of the 40 places available.

Now the debate: go in now, a full 20 minutes early, and awkwardly avoid eye contact until class started or stay outside in the sharp bite of the autumn morning and maybe be forced to sit right next to her, where she would definitely notice that I was not special in any way.

I groaned dramatically and followed the ghost of her footsteps up the stone steps and into the lecture hall.

The small classes was one of the main things that made me choose this place. I'd always been too busy taking care of mom to excel in school, but thankfully tutoring had turned me around. Now I had a solid 4.0 GPA and almost no social life to threaten it. Why would she even look twice at me? I sighed and carefully squashed every bit of hope I had in me that she and I would strike up an instant and passionate relationship.

I am Will Parry. That is not how I operate. I live in the library and the nebulous universe of the Internet. My friends are the characters in TV shows, but only the shows that aren't irritatingly predictable. It is rare for me to not see a plot twist before it happens.

My only friend outside of Netflix is Iorek, this huge bear of a dude from somewhere in Greenland. He doesn't talk much, but he and I have been friends for a couple years now and he's probably closer to a brother to me.

Somehow, he seemed to have beat me to class and waved me over to the far side of the room, where he'd saved me a seat. There were five rows of eight tables, and the girl I'd been drooling over was as close to the middle of the room as you could get. I realized my feet weren't moving, and Iorek was very confused.

"Will!" he said, "over here!"

The blonde girl looked up at the door when he spoke, and spotted me standing there like an idiot, in all my grandpa-cardigan-covered glory. Her eyebrow raised at me, green eyes flashing. I flushed and ducked my head, walking to Iorek without tripping (which was pretty incredible).

Now all I had to do was sit through a 1-hour lecture on behavioral sciences that I was going to have to really work to listen to. And I would have to try not to look to my right, over my shoulder, where _she_ sat watching.


	2. Chapter 2

**Hello! Thanks for reading, apparently the first chapter has about 40 views, which is way more than I was hoping :D**

**Here's Chapter 2, if you like or have any comments, please favorite/follow/review. If you don't like, don't waste your typing skills telling me.**

**Hugs to you all!**

Dr. Mary Malone is a very good teacher. She's one of my favorites, due to her being in her mid-thirties and not completely fossilized like some of the other professors I'd seen shuffling around campus. I'm not trying to be disrespectful to my elders, I'm just saying she isn't as jaded as they all seem to be. She still saw each student as a person, and taught to each individual in the room, so sure that every young mind there was important and attentive, destined for great things.

That kind of optimism and effort was what endeared me to her. Her tardiness was not

I had suffered twenty-five minutes of Iorek's companiable silence, studiously focusing anywhere but on that goddess who sat behind me to the right, just in the corner of my eye if I turned the slightest bit.

Do you know how long twenty-five minutes is? That's 1500 seconds. I could read at least 46 pages in that time, had I remembered to bring a book. For the first time in my memory, I had not brought a book.

After twenty five minutes of agonizing silence, my stomach flip-flopping in my chest, the door to the lecture hall banged open, both heavy wooden doors smacking into the plastered walls and making my head snap up, eyes wide.

A boy swaggered in, confident and smirking. _God, who smirks? Really?_ _Only characters in books do that, no one in real life smirks._ Apparently someone had forgotten to tell this guy though. He was very attractive, to be sure. I'd seen him in some classes before, last year. He was the kind of student to make sarcastic comments and hit on anything with a faint pulse.

I rolled my eyes and tried very hard to calm my body's reaction to Pan's sudden entrance. I know there's no way he could possibly have known about my little anxiety problem, but freaking out over a loud noise was putting my lack of game on prominent display, and with the goddess behind me looking at me inquisitively with a quirked eyebrow, I was trying desperately to relax and look cool.

My fingers were clutched tightly around the desk in front of me, knuckles white and tendons standing out from the skin. I released my death grip and rubbed my shaking hands together, rolling my long fingers and cracking the joints.

Iorek was looking at me out of the corner of his eye. He knew why I jumped like that. He had seen, once, how bad it got sometimes. After almost two years of being friends he had finally convinced me to let him stay over one night, and it happened to be a night that mom wasn't herself.

He'd seen her in the corner of the kitchen, hair loose and pajamas in disarray. He'd seen how she shook and swiped at the air in pure terror, fighting demons that didn't exist. He'd seen her eyes when she saw us, a hint of reality filtering in slowly to her distant universe, and he'd seen how she cried out, thinking we were trying to hurt her too. Her feet scrabbled for purchase on the stained floor, trying to run but not strong enough to propel her body away.

It only took a few hurried words to make him go outside, and I sat on the floor with her until she let me hold her hand. It was half an hour later that she let me take her up to her room and give her her pills. She'd swallowed them meekly; two little yellow capsules the only thing keeping her from becoming more of "a danger to herself and others". Her tenuous hold on real life, on the life we struggled to create together.

I let Iorek come back in when she was sleeping, and he didn't mention anything about what had happened, as if it was a great love of his to stand out in the rain for over an hour, alone and outside an unfamiliar shabby house. Hadn't commented as we watched an awful movie on our small television, perched on the couch that had stuffing poking out of it in uncomfortable places. He's never said anything about mom. That's one of the reasons I trust him.

Now he looks to make sure that I can handle this, as if some loud noises will shock me back into the worst night of my life, when they took her from me. He makes sure that I am stronger than those memories, and today I am.

**LYRA'S POV:**

The boy jumped like he had been shot at, blue eyes wide and tense under straight black brows. He had a death grip on the wood of the desk and his feet unconsciously moved under his body, ready to propel him up and away, fight or flight.

This in itself would only have been mildly interesting if the guy next to him, the big burly one, hadn't focused on Will too. He didn't care about Pan sauntering into the room, he spared Pan only a glance to make sure he wasn't dangerous before he looked to the boy next to him, tense and watchful.

So Will doesn't like loud noises. And Chewbacca knows why.

"Are you okay?" the giant rumbled, voice low and lightly accented.

The dark haired boy, Will, didn't reply right away. He unclenched his hands and shifted his feet back under the desk, breathing deeply. "Yes," he said quietly, "sorry."

"Well…" came a voice from right next to my left ear, making me flinch. _Did you really just spend a full minute creeping on some other people's personal conversations? Stop it, Lyra. No one likes an eavesdropper._

I turned to see Pan sitting next to me. He was wearing that stupid leather jacket of his, the one that was slightly too big and smelled like mothballs. He had a plaid shirt and skinny jeans on under it. Pan knew exactly what he looked like, and getting dressed every morning was a calculated game for him, designed to get people to notice him, to make them see his outside and not his inside.

"Can I help you?" I tried to keep my voice polite, but if I had wanted to talk to Pan I wouldn't have broken up with him.

"Yeah, why didn't you call me back, baby?" he said, grating on my nerves. "I've left like 10 messages-" He said this as if it was normal to call me that name, but his face was too casual, his words the slightest bit higher than its usual pitch.

"Can you not call me 'baby'? I was having such a lovely day and I'm really not in the mood for any of your shit." The jerk had the nerve to look shocked. Trying to be polite, I amended my earlier statement. "Unless you brought me coffee."

Pan looked down at his conspicuously coffee-free hands. "…No, I didn't."

"Well then," I said, giving him my best vacuous, sickly sweet smile, "Unless your testicles have magically morphed into a cappuccino machine, I suggest you kindly fuck off."

Will, two rows away, seemed to be choking on poorly-contained laughter. His shoulders were shaking and the back of his neck was a bit red. His laugh was really nice, actually, although it was muffled by Grizzly-Man thumping his back. The guy seemed genuinely worried that Will was choking.

Pan's eyes narrowed as he glanced in their direction, but just as he opened his mouth (presumably to say something witty and nasty), the teacher walked into the room. His hand tightened into a fist but he snapped his mouth shut and walked to the back of the room, dumping his bag next to his chair.

_Thank God for that timing_, I thought. An angry Pan is not a pretty one.

"All right, class," the teacher began, confident although slightly late. "My name is Dr. Mary Malone. I know that some of you are majoring in very different areas, like Social Care or Human Behavioral Studies, but you will want to pay attention and work together to get through my class, because I am paid my salary to shove knowledge into your minds and I do intend to fulfill my end of that obligation." She said all this with the authority of a drill sergeant, her short dark hair swinging about her head as she settled herself at the front of the room. Rosy cheeks and kind eyes were a bit of a contrast to the no-nonsense tone of her

Immediately I realized that I liked her quite a lot, she was a bit of a walking contradiction. Looks like a soccer mom, writes like Einstein (I've read all her papers) and speaks like a dictator.

I booted up my laptop and began to take notes.


	3. Chapter 3

**Hello lovelies! Sorry for the delay- still figuring out exactly how to post stuff here- but I figured two chapters in one day wouldn't be too shabby, especially since they are pretty short. Enjoy!**

**By the way- Katie, your review made my day and I am sending virtual snuggles your way :)**

WILL'S POV:

Mary Malone's class dragged on for about an hour, and after the first five minutes I stopped freaking out about the goddess close behind me- _Lyra, her name is Lyra_- and had to use all my focus struggling to keep up with Dr. Malone's rapid-fire river of knowledge. My fingers kept cramping as I scrawled in my notebook, drawing arrows, underlining key phrases, circling dates.

I cringed internally when, during a lull, I realized that I was the only one taking notes in an actual paper notebook, that every other student in there was either recording the lecture on their smartphones for later dissection, or typing quickly on laptops. I don't have a laptop, of course. I use the computers in the library when I need to do research or type up a paper.

I'm not waging a righteous crusade against Apple by boycotting their products, I just can't afford to buy a laptop, even a used one. Every dollar I earn goes to the mortgage my mom can't pay, or to food, or groceries, or the cheap phone I only have to make sure that if anything happens to mom, I'll get a call before anyone else.

So when class was dismissed and I shook out my aching hand, I didn't really have it in me to complain. I still get my mom back sometimes, and even though it's getting more rare as time goes on, I can't regret anything I do for her.

As students filed toward the doors, chatting and laughing, I had to wait for Iorek to go through the process of naming his document, saving it, exiting the window, and powering down the laptop that he finds so confusing every single time he does it.

I helped him as much as I could, at one point having to pretty much take the machine from him, where it looked comically small and flimsy in his massive hands.

Finally we turned to leave the hall and, without even meaning to, I searched for a mass of dirty blonde hair- but she was gone. And when had I let myself start to hope again? How do I make this go away?

For the second time that day, I took a deep breath and mentally tore down the pillars my mind had built, unaware they were being constructed. No, she does not think I'm interesting. No, she is not perfect for me. And no, I will probably never speak to her.

Hope-free and suitably somber, I walked with Iorek out the large wooden door and back down the steps into the autumn chill. Iorek, noticing that I was still rubbing my hands together, grunted, "Are you cold again?" He knows I have the body heat of a lizard in February.

"No, man," I reassured him, "I think I gave my hand permanent muscle damage though with all those notes. I have-" I flipped through my blue notebook, counting the pages- "13 pages, front and back. God. I'm gonna need to type these up, there's no way I'll be able to read them with my awful handwriting."

"You can use my laptop, if you want," he offered, nonchalant. As if I handled $2000 computers on a daily basis.

"Absolutely not," I told him, firm but grateful. "You still have another class today, right?" He nodded. "Yeah, you need it for notes. I'll just use the one in the library, I don't have anything else scheduled for today anyway."

He nodded his assent and turned towards his next class, lumbering through the wind without saying goodbye. That's Iorek for you, he personifies 'strong and silent'. I snorted a bit, yelled, "Bye!" pointedly at the back of his head, and spun around to head to the library. But of course it wasn't that easy.

Lyra stood about twenty feet away, under a large sugar maple tree that had turned impossibly orange in anticipation of colder weather. The grass around her was turning a bit brown, getting closer in color to the wide path leading to the library. There she stood, eyes closed, head tilted slightly upward, facing into the wind with a small smile on her flawless face. _She looks like a painting_, I thought.

It struck me suddenly that she wasn't wearing nearly enough clothing for this type of weather, and then the teenage boy part of my brain decided that, actually, she was wearing far _too much_ clothing. I told that part in no uncertain terms that it needed to shut up.

I planned to walk past her, unnoticed, go to the library, type up my notes and leave. I walked towards her on the path, trying to be quiet so she didn't open her eyes. Of course, walking on uneven bricks while gaping open-mouthed at a fantasy come to life is really difficult, even if you wear shoes the correct size. My shoes were hand-me-downs from Old Man Balthamos down the street, and they were much too large. The toe caught in an uneven seam and I stumbled, involuntarily mumbling something under my breath about stupid bricks and stupid shoes- and then Lyra's eyes were on me and I swear I blushed.

"Sorry," I mumbled, fighting to calm the flush I could feel on my neck, "I didn't mean to-"

"It's fine," Lyra said, smiling, her green eyes sparkling in the weak sunlight. My heart stuttered in my chest, uneven and frantic. "Aren't you.." I cleared my throat nervously, my voice sounding weird to my ears. "Aren't you cold? It's like 55 degrees out here." As if to illustrate my point, another ice-cold gust of wind tore through the path, causing a few of the maple leaves to swirl down to join their fellows on the lawn.

Lyra smiled again, and my stomach executed a perfect backflip. "I don't get cold in weather like this," she said. "Only in air-conditioning, for some reason. But outside, like this….I just love this. I don't like feeling it through layers, I like to feel it on my skin." And if that wasn't the most erotic thing I'd heard in my life, it was definitely in the top three, because now that she mentioned bare skin, I just wanted to run my hands over all of her, then my lips, and not stop until she knew I saw how incredibly beautiful she was

I realized quite suddenly that we were technically in the middle of a conversation, and this was the part where I should say something (_and not what you were just thinking about, Will_). "Oh," I said, quite intelligently. "Well then, I'll…I'll see you later." _Great, that sounds incredibly rude. Please explain._ "I was gonna go to the library, I have to type some stuff. Uh… have a good day?" _Great job man, really awesome. Super manly._

Lyra smiled at me again (which she really shouldn't do, because she could cause a serious number of heart attacks) and scared me to death with one sentence: "Yeah, me too. Will you walk me there?"


End file.
